Israeli group says it will make a second attempt to land on the Moon

"We're going to complete the mission."

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This image was taken shortly before the Beresheet spacecraft began its final descent to the Moon.

SpaceIL

This was the final image of the Moon returned from the spacecraft.

SpaceIL

Beresheet captured this image of the Moon from an altitude of 500km.

SpaceIL

On Saturday, just two days after the Beresheet spacecraft crashed into the Moon, the president of SpaceIL said the organization would move forward. Beginning this week, Morris Kahn said, a new task force would learn from the organization's failures and begin developing a new plan for a Beresheet 2 spacecraft.

"We're going to build a new spacecraft, we're going to put it on the Moon, and we're going to complete the mission," said Kahn, a billionaire who personally donated $40 million to the private Israeli effort.

Further Reading

So far, SpaceIL has provided few additional details about the project, such as when it might launch. The original project, started to win the Google Lunar XPrize, began eight years ago.

In a Reddit AMA on Sunday, a volunteer with the project, Ben Nathaniel, added this comment about the new proposal: "Beresheet 2 was only just announced. It will be a major project that will take major planning, coordination and last but not least, financing. At this time there are so many factors at play that we can't yet make a prediction when exactly it will be launched. We do hope to still be the first private company to land on the Moon."

Also this weekend, SpaceIL released some preliminary information on what may have gone wrong with the landing attempt—which was conducted autonomously. The first technical issue occurred about 14km above the Moon's surface, which triggered a chain of events that led to the spacecraft's main engine to fail temporarily. (This may have involved one of Beresheet's IMUs, or inertial measurement units, but so far, SpaceIL has not specified a cause.) At this altitude, the spacecraft was already committed to landing on the Moon.

Eventually, the main engine's function returned, but at that point the spacecraft was just 150 meters above the ground, moving 500km/h toward the surface. Needless to say, this was a terminal velocity. SpaceIL engineers intend to conduct "comprehensive tests" this week to better understand the sequence of events that triggered a temporary failure of the main engine.

Further Reading

In the meantime, the project has won plaudits for its openness and willingness to fail in public view. NASA has had a similar policy since the beginning of its exploration efforts.

"I want to thank @TeamSpaceIL for doing this landing with millions watching around the world, despite knowing the risks," NASA's science chief, Thomas Zurbuchen, tweeted after the landing attempt. "We do the same because we believe in the value of worldwide exploration and inspiration. We encourage all international and commercial explorers to do the same!" This seemed a none-too-subtle nudge toward China, which recently landed on the far side of the Moon but only announced that fact several hours after mission success.

"Launching a mission to the moon is like trying to bullseye a moving dartboard on the far end of a football field."That always helped the 7yr old me understand how difficult of an endevor it was for the US. And it hasn't gotten any easier in the decades that have past. Mechanical failures are still a thing.

Given that their great pathfinder expired within touching distance of its goal, after a long, perilous and unlikely journey, maybe it should have been called Shamot, (exodus) rather than Bereshit (Genesis). Then again given that the Torah doesn't end with the death of Moses, we really shouldn't be surprised that they are going again.

If your post is going to require most readers to utilize some form of translation to understand it, at least make it worth the effort. Simply paraphrasing someone quoted in the article isn't. I down voted "doesn't contribute".

I would assume a second probe to be much cheaper than the first, even if they need to fix some problems that turned up. Of course I think there were lots of people who worked for free on that and they maybe won't be able or willing to make that a habit...

Still, this thing worked astoundingly good for the most part (the probe got into a Moon orbit after all). Improving it would be well worth it.

This point is totally pedantic but.. Using the term terminal here is poetic, but given that this is an article involving physics and math at its core, maybe try a different word? Put another way, I don't think there is a terminal velocity for an object being accelerated in a gravitational field outside an atmosphere.. The vehicle was just traveling faster and lower than its engine could recover from which ended up being a terminal situation for the mission.

I just wish people will start using the new opportunities of "cheap space" to try to make some actual science, not launching into orbit vanity projects for politicians / cars / "destroying other satelites to scare other nations".

The Falcon Heavy mission that launched that "vanity project" also attempted to recover the center core. That's both science *and* engineering.

It also drummed up interest. That matters as well.

"No bucks, no Buck Rogers."

Ever heard that?

Elon Musk is trying things. If we wants to stoke his own ego along the way, I'm going to give him some leeway on that.

I just wish people will start using the new opportunities of "cheap space" to try to make some actual science, not launching into orbit vanity projects for politicians / cars / "destroying other satelites to scare other nations".

If you're talking about Beresheet, it was doing some science. It had a magnetometer and a retroreflector.

As for the Falcon Heavy demo, SpaceX offered NASA a free ride and NASA declined to provide so much as a cubesat.

The Indian ASAT test wasn't "cheap launch". They probably used a high-power surface to air anti-aircraft missile like the US did.

Anyways, being Israeli, it was exciting to see a rare post about my country and didn't want to waste the opportunity to post in Hebrew.

To those who up-voted me, ThanksTo those who down-voted me, try google translate.

One of the best attributes of the Ars comments section is when members from countries featured in articles contribute their own "color commentary" about the topic in question. This adds value, as it is unlikely for Ars authors to have the budget to reach out to individuals in countries across the world for their reaction to an event.

For example, in this case, if you wrote something like: "This was a difficult event for those of us in Israel who were exited to see years of effort on this project end with a successful landing. My colleagues and I have been following the development of this project, which encountered [insert details not in the article here], which was overcame by [more details], etc."

After contributing something that everyone can easily read, you could then sign off in Hebrew, as some subset of people who find your comment valuable would then make the effort to translate your sentence, and hopefully learn something interesting in the process.

Perhaps there is a limit to what what a bargain basement space probe can accomplish.

That is to say....the initial budget was $100 million, and it failed. So now they will spend another $100 million....whereas if they had gone with a $200 million probe in the first place, it would have been better equipped.

They can probably build another mostly out of flight spares for a much lower price.

Perhaps there is a limit to what what a bargain basement space probe can accomplish.

That is to say....the initial budget was $100 million, and it failed. So now they will spend another $100 million....whereas if they had gone with a $200 million probe in the first place, it would have been better equipped.

Or they would have still failed. Landing failures aren't that uncommon even for larger better funded programs. Is there any country which landed a probe anywhere beyond Earth on the first try?

US didn't, Soviet Union didn't, China didn't, the UK didn't. I believe (not 100% sure) Japan didn't. Hell both Russia and US's first attempt at impactors for the moon failed. Yes we both managed to miss the moon despite trying to crash into it. So SpaceIL is ahead of the two superpowers in terms of first attempt accomplishments.

On edit: India may have (with a hard landing). The impactor on Chandrayaan-1 was successful. I believe that was the first attempt at an impactor.